BY MIRABEL ODETA
More than 100 Venezuelan migrants who had just been deported from the United States were caught in a terrifying disaster when powerful earthquakes struck Venezuela shortly after their arrival, leaving them trapped inside a damaged hotel and forcing survivors to search through the destruction for people who were missing.
A deportation flight from Miami landed in Venezuela only hours before the earthquakes hit on Wednesday. The flight carried 146 Venezuelans, including 19 women and seven children, according to ICE Flight Monitor, an initiative that tracks deportation flights. After arriving, the deportees were taken to a hotel in La Guaira, one of the areas most severely affected by the powerful earthquakes.
The two major earthquakes, measuring 7.2 and 7.5 in magnitude, caused widespread destruction, collapsing buildings and leaving communities struggling to find survivors. Venezuelan officials reported that more than 1,700 people were killed in the disaster.
Lisbeth Portillo, 58, was among those who escaped from the damaged hotel. She said she managed to get out of the rubble along with about 20 other deportees, and together they walked through the streets searching for help. Along the way, they saw people running from damaged buildings, some without shoes and others barely able to escape the destruction around them.
“We walked about five kilometers, and I cried and cried … there was no communication,” Portillo said in a phone interview from her home in Maracaibo, Venezuela.
The group eventually reached a National Guard facility, where they were finally able to contact their relatives and let them know they had survived.
“I was born again; God gave me a second chance,” Portillo said. She added that the experience left her deeply shaken and emotional.
The deportees had arrived in Venezuela the same day they were sent back from the United States. Portillo was among migrants affected by the Trump administration’s expanded deportation efforts. Deportation flights were carried out to multiple countries, including Venezuela, as part of a broader immigration enforcement campaign.
Flights to Venezuela resumed in February 2025 after a 13-month pause. According to ICE Flight Monitor, the United States operated multiple deportation flights to Venezuela in May, with flights taking place several times each week.
Portillo said Venezuelan authorities transported the group to the Hotel Santuario La Llanada, where they received medical examinations and identification documents. Officials told them they would be able to continue traveling home the following day.
She was staying in a second-floor room with 16 other women when the earthquake began. Portillo said she had stepped onto a balcony to look toward the sea and noticed the unusual darkness in the sky and intense heat. She returned to the room, lay down on a bed, and soon felt the building begin to shake.
“I started hearing ‘papa, papa papapa,’ and I saw the women next to me start to fall,” she said, describing the sounds and movement during the earthquake. “They were all screaming for help.”
Shortly afterward, another powerful earthquake struck, causing more destruction.
Portillo said she fell and became trapped under debris, with a beam covering part of her body. She explained that the movement of the shaking eventually shifted the rubble enough for her to escape. She suffered bruises across her body but survived.
Another deportee, 24-year-old Jenny Rodriguez, told Telemundo that she was also on the flight and had been taken to the same hotel. She said she became trapped beneath the rubble and was helped by another person who had been on the same deportation flight.
“I managed to free my hand from the debris, grabbed him by the trousers, and begged for help,” Rodriguez said. She credited the person who helped her and said she was grateful to have survived.
Meanwhile, Liliana Rojas said she was trying to locate her 33-year-old partner, who had also been detained in the United States before being deported. She said she had received little information about his condition.
“No one is giving an answer about anything,” Rojas said.
Portillo, who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in November 2021 and said she had a pending asylum claim, said the chaos of the earthquake made it difficult for her to even remember her children’s phone number. She eventually contacted her husband in the United States.
“I said to him, ‘Cesar, I’m alive. Help me,’” she recalled. “My husband kept saying, ‘It can’t be.’ I told him, ‘I’m alive, I made it out of the rubble, I’m alive.’”
Her husband contacted their children, who later reunited with her after she returned home.
Reflecting on the disaster, Portillo said surviving the earthquake changed how she viewed her life.
“I was born that day; on the 24th, I was born again,” she said. She had previously lived in South Florida for more than four years before being deported.
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